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Mark Rutte
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was upbeat that the military organisation will agree on massive spending hikes at a transformational summit on Wednesday, as member state leaders including US President Donald Trump assembled in The Netherlands. Leaders of the 32-nation alliance are expected to agree a new defense spending target of 5 per cent of gross domestic product, as the United States NATO's biggest-spending member shifts its attention away from Europe to focus on security priorities elsewhere. So a transformational summit. Looking forward to it, Rutte told reporters in The Hague, before chairing the meeting's only working session, which was expected to last less than three hours. But ahead of the meeting, Spain announced that it would not be able to reach the target by the new 2035 deadline, calling it unreasonable. Belgium signalled that it would not get there either, and Slovakia said it reserves the right to decide its own defence spending. Rutte conceded that these ar
Most U.S. allies at NATO endorse President Donald Trump's demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs and are ready to ramp up security spending even more, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Thursday. There's broad support, Rutte told reporters after chairing a meeting of NATO defense ministers at the alliance's Brussels headquarters. We are really close, he said, and added that he has total confidence that we will get there by the next NATO summit in three weeks. European allies and Canada have already been investing heavily in their armed forces, as well as on weapons and ammunition, since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. At the same time, some have balked at U.S. demands to invest 5% of GDP on defense 3.5% on core military spending and 1.5% on the roads, bridges, airfields and sea ports needed to deploy armies more quickly. Still struggling to meet the old goal: In 2023, as Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine entered i
NATO's secretary-general said he wants to discuss ways to put Ukraine in a position of strength for any future peace talks with Russia during a meeting on Wednesday with Ukraine's president and a small number of European leaders. But Mark Rutte appeared frustrated at growing speculation in NATO capitals about when those peace talks might start and whether European peacekeepers would be involved, saying that speaking publicly about it plays into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. "High on the agenda is to make sure that the president, his team in Ukraine, are in the best possible position one day when they decide so to start the peace talks," Rutte told reporters as he welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his residence in Brussels. The focus, Rutte said, must be "to do everything now to make sure that when it comes to air defence, when it comes to other weapons systems, that we make sure that we provide whatever we can". He said that another issue up for .